Gran smiles and strokes Dart’s scaly cheek. “My connection works with him much the same way as it does with other animals. His thought patterns are different but based on instinct and survival the same as all animals. He loves you.”
“I love him too. He’s my boy.”
“Your boy is hungry. He hasn’t wanted to complain, but sharing with his brood mates is getting less and less comfortable for him since his transition.”
“Oh, no. What can we feed him?”
Gran picks up her basket and smiles. “Jimmy and Terry O’Rourke next door work for the road works department. They often clear dead deer or cattle off the road. I’ll call them and see if there’s been anything today.”
“Mmm, a whole deer would fill your tummy, wouldn’t it?” I rub my knuckles between his horns, and he lets out another purr. “Thanks, Gran. I hate the idea of him being hungry.”
“I’ll call right now. Be back in a jiffy.”
My smile widens, and my heart melts. “Perfect. Thanks. Is Granda home? I need to ask him about something I’m dealing with back home.”
“He’s down at the rings.”
“Okay. I’ll check in with him. Oh, and Sloan is coming with Liam, my best friend from home. I’m not sure how spry Liam will be. He’s had a rough couple of days.”
Gran pulls a patch of windblown hair from her face and pegs me with a knowing look. “Sloan mentioned that when he called us this morning. Fash not, luv. When they arrive, I’ll pamper him up a little. Yer friend will be in good hands.”
“The best hands. Thanks, Gran.”
I head across the lawn and wave for Dart to come with me. He’s keen to follow and prances and rolls and plays all the way there. When we crest the edge of the amphitheater’s sunken rings, I point down at my grandfather working out with a staff against a wooden dummy. Well, dummy is generous. It’s a wooden post with thick poles sticking out of it in every direction. “That’s Granda. Don’t eat him either, ’kay?”
Dart dips his chin.
“That’s my boy. So smart.”
The two of us descend the three tiers of steps cut into the valley. I take the stairs and Dart runs off each tier and flaps his wings as he falls the three feet to the level below. Granda is engrossed in his workout, but when we get close, I call out and wave. “Hellooo, Granda!”
Granda’s look of affection morphs to wide-eyed surprise. “Fi, mo chroi, who have ye here?”
After we complete the introductions and I warn Granda that Gran says my boy is quite hungry, I get to why I needed to visit. “And so, now Toronto’s buzzing with dark and greedy people seeking the Eochair Prana. They dragged Myra into it, and me by extension.”
Granda wraps a towel around his neck and pulls a sweatshirt over his workout shirt. “It’s too cold to chat about it out here when I’m covered in sweat. Let me get changed, and we’ll see what we can figure out.”
* * *
By the time we get back to the house, Sloan and Liam have arrived, and my bestie is getting the royal Gran treatment of tea and sweets inside. I ask Dart if he wants to come in, but he’s having too much fun rolling in the grass. “Okay, but don’t go anywhere. Stay within the line of the trees, okay?”
I’m fairly sure he understood that, but figure I can watch him from the window, to be certain.
“—the winter when she was ten, we went tobogganing on what the local kids called Murder Mountain. While all the neighborhood tough guys stood at the top daring everyone else to go down, Fi grabbed Calum’s Thunder Tube and ran over the ridge.”
Gran chuckles. “Och, and she showed the boys who was the bravest of them all.”
“Ha!” I laugh. “Nothing as inspirational as that, Gran. Sorry to disappoint.”
“It didn’t end well?”
“I’ll let Liam finish his story.”
They all turn to him, and he continues, “Being the youngest, she’d been a passenger on the tube many times but hadn’t gotten to steer it. After an unlucky bounce, the innertube went off the side of the hill and over a rise. When the tube fell away beneath her, she flew headfirst at the trunk of a tree. She crossed her arms in front of her head to break the impact, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Sloan makes a face. “How broken did you get?”
“Two broken arms and one exposed bone.”
Gran winces. “Oh, luv. That must’ve been excruciating.”
I pull my sleeve up my arm and show them the scar where the bone came out. “The bright side was John-David Hurst, the cutest, toughest boy at school, heard what happened and came to sign my cast. He kissed me and said I was brave.”
Liam laughs. “Yeah. Then Aiden, Brendan, and I tackled him into the snowbank around the corner and gave him a beatdown for putting the moves on her.”
Sloan chuckles. “Poor John-David. He likely couldn’t help himself. And what’s good oul John-David up to now?”
“I think he sells carpets.”
Liam leans back and snatches another pastry off the sweets plate. “He wasn’t good enough for her then or now.”
I frown at him and shake my head. “And you’re still stepping in and trying to protect me. It almost got you killed this time. It can’t happen again.”
The two of us stare at one another for a long time before Granda clears his throat. “Weel, if I get an opinion, I’m grateful yer not dead, Fi. And although I’ve never officially met the boy yet, anyone who spent his life as one of yer brothers, watching out for ye and protecting ye is family in my book.”
Liam shifts to get up and Granda waves him back down. “Don’t get up, son. I heard Wallace pulled two bullets out of ye yesterday.”
He nods. “True story. Although I’m sore, I feel much better than I should in such a short time.”
“That’s healing magic for ye, son. And we’re thrilled it all turned out—”
A shrill screech at the side of the house has me running for the door and the household clamoring behind me.
The scene out on the driveway takes a moment to figure out. A screaming woman is hiding behind the stone half-wall that lines the walkway, Dart’s in the back of a dusty red pickup truck, and blood and fur are flying in the air.
“Sweet mercies.” Granda rushes out to the woman. “Terry, are ye all right?”
“That… That… What is… It jumped in…”
“Och, the poor dear was famished.” Gran sends Dart a look of utter adoration. “Have ye more than one deer, Terry? A cow, maybe?”
The woman looks from Gran to Dart, and her eyes roll back in her head.
“Well, now.” Gran’s eyebrows arch with amusement. “Fi, take yer wee man and his dinner around back. Sloan, darlin’ can ye take care of our traumatized neighbor? Lugh, ye’ll need to clean up this mess.”
“Yes, Gran,” I say as the three of us rush forward. “Come on, Dart. We’ll bring your deer with us. Don’t worry.”
Dart rises with half a deer sticking out of his mouth.
I grab the two front hooves and pull it down and out of the pickup. “You get to keep it, just bring it around the back so the nice lady doesn’t freak out.”
The two of us get around the house before Terry O’Rourke revives. Granda is in the back of her truck with the hose. And Sloan’s bending over the collapsed neighbor.
“I take it that not everyone here knows about the druid and dragon stuff?” Liam chuckles and follows me onto the back lawn.
“No. Very few, actually.”
“What happens now? With her, I mean?”
“Nothing. Sloan will take care of her memory and ease her anxiety. She’ll be fine.”
“Another fire put out.”
“That’s life these days—” my phone rings, and I wince. Damn. No phone plan. I check the number but accept the call anyway. “Garnet, hey, did you get the message that I’m okay?”
“I did. Your father called me last night. You must have some feline in you Lady Druid because I’m quite sure you have nine lives.”
“Yeah, well, my survival wasn’t my doing. Liam jumped in front of the firing gun. He’s the hero this time around.”
“That’s why I called. Did you by chance put out a retaliatory strike on Kartak and the hobgoblins?”
“Me? No. Why? Has something happened?”
“You might say that. It seems Kartak and his warriors have all spontaneously died a violent and bloody death. Shredded to bits is the best way to describe it.”
I hit the button for speakerphone so Liam can hear. “I can’t say I’ll mourn them, but it wasn’t me. I escaped with Liam using the portal to the dragon lair. I’m in Ireland, and Liam’s just coming around.”
“And would your bear be there with you?”
Dread rushes over me in a hot wave and I ass-plant on the grass. “Oh, no… Is that what you think happened?”
“Officially, I asked you, and you knew nothing about it. I’m satisfied with that. Between friends, I’d say your bear is very unforgiving of brutes targeting you. I won’t look too closely at this because I don’t want to find what I think I’ll find, but I thought you should know.”
“Thank you. Garnet, I honestly had no idea… I never would’ve—”
“Enough said on that. Now, to the next point. You told me that if you knew the magical sect of the dead spellcaster in the bookshop, your Gran could likely help Leniya. The man was an Evening Shade Wizard.”
“Okay, thanks, I’ll tell her. What about Myra? Any change there?”
“Nothing new. She’s comfortable and stable.”
I draw a deep breath and take comfort in that much at least. “Okay, good. I’ll let you go and text you when I’m back home.”
“Safe travels…and I’m very pleased you’re not dead.”
I hang up and smile. My baby dragon has finished eating and taken what’s left into the nest he made for himself in Gran’s weed garden. He’s lying with his head on his front legs, his eyes heavy, and is purring.
“Is your tummy all filled up, buddy? Are you good?” I scrub his nose horns and lay my head against his. “Sweet dreams, baby boy. Remember, don’t go anywhere and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Chapter Eleven
“How’s yer wee dragonborn, luv?” Gran asks as Liam and I step inside.
“Quite content. His belly is full, and he’s curled up and drifting off to sleep in your weed bed. Sorry, all your weeds will be crushed flat when he’s finished out there.”
“That’s all right. If that’s where he wants to nest for the night, my weed bed is honored to be his dragon bed. It’s better than having him decide to sleep in the house. I’d allow it, of course, but I’d worry about things.”
I can’t even imagine that. “Not to worry. Until he’s fully housebroken, outside in the garden is fine.” I feel the round of the teapot and smile when my hand warms against the ceramic spout. Grabbing an oversized mug from the cupboard, I pour myself a heaping huge tea. “Oh, and I’m supposed to tell you that the spellcaster who harmed Myra’s home tree was an Evening Shade Wizard.”
“Och, that’s good to know. I’ll get to work researching what spell could’ve been used based on the tree’s reaction and work on a remedy straight away. You head into the living room. Yer men are waitin’ to talk to ye about the Morrigan’s spellbook.”
My men. I don’t comment on that. Instead, I push the thought of men out of my head and focus on the business at hand: the Eochair Prana, the people who threatened Myra, the antidote to wake her, and the remedy to help her ancient ash recover from the dark magic spell poisoning.
I find Liam lying on the couch in the living room with his eyes closed and a blanket pulled over his legs. I raise my cellphone and take a picture of him looking peaceful.
He cracks an eye open and smiles. “Is there a reason you’re taking pictures of me?”
“I didn’t think a mental snapshot would do you justice. As sick as it makes me to say it, I almost lost you last night. You mean a lot to a lot of people. It would’ve killed me to be responsible for that. I feel extremely fortunate right now.”
“I love you too, Fi. Now go away. I’m tired.”
“Consider me gone. Sleep well.”
I leave Liam to his recovery and find Granda and Sloan in the office with their heads together over a pile of texts and scrolls. More than once, I’ve wondered if the two of them bonded because of their shared love of history or if Sloan loves history because it connected them.
It’s a chicken and the egg question.
It works for them, whichever way it started.
“Fi, come in.” Granda coaxes me farther into the study. “Come see what we’ve pulled together for you so far.”
The two of them are standing on the working side of the desk, so I stay on the opposite side and look across. With my palms planted on the wide, wooden surface, I glance over several of the open books. “What language is that?”
Granda points in turn to three different sources. “This one is Latin of the Renaissance era, this one is Old Irish, and this one is a coded text that Arthur and his knights used to keep from letting enemies read their encrypted messages.”
“You both can read them?”
Sloan shrugs. “I’m competent with Latin and Common Brittonic. Lugh was explaining the cipher for the Arthurian script to me.”
The way he says it, it’s as if he’s embarrassed he’s not proficient in all three. “You amaze me, Mackenzie. Here you are all chiseled and polished in all things druid, and I’m clunking along in the dark. You must think I’m a total chunk of unsculptured rock weighing everyone down.”
Sloan frowns. “Not even close. Michaelangelo said he saw the angel in the raw marble before he began to sculpt. He simply worked to set it free. To me, you are the blossom of a rare and unique flower. When you fully bloom, you’ll take everyone’s breath away.”
The reverence in his tone is way too real. I draw a deep breath. “You really can lay on the charm when you want to, can’t you?”
“It’s easy when it’s the truth.”
I swallow, waaaay too aware that this convo is getting very personal in the company of my grandfather. I look at Granda and scrub a hand over my heated cheeks. “Okay, tell me what you found. What do we know for sure?”
Granda rescues me from the awkwardness of the moment by diving headfirst into the research. You gotta love a scholar. He gets so excited about the facts he finds in books. “Let’s start with what we know for sure. Legend states that there is only one true Eochair Prana—which Morgan le Fey penned in the days of her declining morality.”
“And the copies?”
“It’s said the original book circulated for a very short time before it disappeared and was copied by the manservant of the sorcerer who had it last. While he captured the knowledge, the copies didn’t possess the enchantment of the original.”
“Which is probably a good thing,” I observe. “Garnet described it as a tell-all info dump of all things fae magic.”
“That it is. Some believe that Morgana’s need for power and control sent her into the clutches of using darker and darker magic, blood payments, soul siphoning, and necromancy. The taint of those sources, in turn, infected her with the darkness that began to consume her.”
“So, she’s going batshit. She’s super powerful, and she writes a book. What happened to her then?”
“That’s the stuff of legends and theories. Did she incur the wrath of the fae gods? There is mention of her being imprisoned in a dark hell. Some people believe she went mad and chose to disappear and seclude herself from the rise of Christianity. Some think she challenged the Lady of the Lake and was never seen again.”
“And her book lived on as her legacy.”
Sloan flips the page to show me a faded pen and ink sketch of a book cover. “It’s believed she gave it a simple leather cover so it wouldn’t draw attention.”
“So, how did she supposedly enchant it to allow practitioners the ability to call her from the beyo
nd?”
“She put a piece of herself into it.”
I frown. “Like Voldemort’s Horcrux?”
Sloan chuckles. “For lack of a better example, sure. The Morrigan is believed to have penned the tome with her blood and attached a fragment of her soul to it as well.”
“The fragmenting of her soul couldn’t have done her any favors in the batshit category. It probably fueled her crazy-train to chug faster down the tracks.”
Granda nods. “It might well have done that. There’s no way to know for sure.”
“So, how does this help us? Garnet said a friend of his owned one of the copies and tried to summon her for immortality, but he died anyway.”
Granda flips a few more pages and shows me a picture of—Ohmygosh.
“I had much the same reaction,” Sloan says.
I lean closer to examine the picture. It’s not entirely clear, and it’s only a rendering…but there’s no mistaking it. “That’s the amulet you and I retrieved for Pan Dora from the graveyard.”
Granda’s brow creases and he straightens. “All right, how about you start that from the beginning of that story?”
“I’ll tell you Granda, but I need you to promise it stays between us. Pan Dora is a friend, and unless she’s done something incredibly wrong in her past life, she has the right to her privacy and her current secrets.”
Granda’s scowl reminds me so much of my father it’s crazy. “I promise to honor your friend’s privacy as long as it’s within our power and doesn’t put anyone at risk.”
I check with Sloan to see what he thinks, and he nods. “That sounds fair to me, but it’s yer call. She’s yer friend.”
I mull that over and decide to give Granda the full story. “Okay, a few weeks ago when we were working on the grove, I went to my druid ink master Pan Dora for some advice.”
“That’s your friend that is or was a man, but lives and performs as a woman?”
“A drag queen, yes. She’s trans—to oversimplify for the sake of time, she was born a male but chooses to live as a woman.” Granda’s look of confusion makes me smile. “I suppose that might sound strange to you living here in a quiet little Irish countryside and insulated in the druid community, but it’s not so strange in the city.”
A Family Oath Page 11
